Chapter IV (2)

Then there were numerous magnificent cabinets, ancient and modern, inlaid with elegant mosaic work, and on their shelves rested that rich, curious, and antique old china of every design, for which the wealthy were wont to pay such fabulous prices. Some was of exquisite beauty and elegant design; others, to my unpractised eye, would have suffered in comparison with our present kitchen delf. Elegant tapestries, cabinet paintings, beautifully-modelled furniture, met the eye at every turn; rare bronze busts and statues appropriately placed; the floors one sheet of polished oak, so exactly were they matched; and the grand entrance doors of each one of the long range of beautiful rooms being placed exactly opposite the other, give a vista of five hundred and sixty feet in length.

Then there was the great library, which is a superb room over a hundred feet long, with great columns from floor to ceiling, and a light gallery running around it. Opening out of it are an ante-library and cabinet library--perfect gems of rooms, rich in medallions, pictures by Landseer, &c., and, of course, each room containing a wealth of literature on the book-shelves in the Spanish mahogany alcoves. In fact, the rooms in this edifice realize one's idea of a nobleman's palace, and the visitor sees that they contain all that unbounded wealth can purchase, and taste and art produce. I must not forget, in one of these apartments, a whole set of exquisite little filigree, silver toys, made for one of the duke's daughters, embracing a complete outfit for a baby-house, and including piano, chairs, carriage, &c., all beautifully wrought, elaborate specimens of workmanship, artistically made, but, of course, useless for service.

In one of the great galleries we were shown a magnificent collection of artistic wealth in the form of nearly a thousand original drawings--first rough sketches of the old masters, some of their masterpieces which adorn the great galleries of Europe, and are celebrated all over the world.

Only think of looking upon the _original designs_, the rough crayon, pencil, or chalk sketches made by Rubens, Salvator Rosa, Claude Lorraine, Raphael, Titian, Correggio, Michael Angelo, Nicolas Poussin, Hogarth, and other great artists, of some of their most celebrated works, and these sketches bearing the autographic signatures of the painters! This grand collection of artistic wealth is all arrayed and classified into Flemish, Venetian, Spanish, French, and Italian schools, &c., and the value in an artistic point of view is almost as inconceivable as the interest to a lover of art is indescribable. The tourist can only feel, as he is compelled to hurry through such treasures of art, that the brief time he has to devote to them is but little better than an aggravation.

An elegant private chapel, rich in sculpture, painting, and carving, affords opportunity for the master of this magnificent estate to worship God in a luxurious manner. Scenes from the life of the Saviour, from the pencils of great artists, adorn the walls--Verrio's Incredulity of Thomas; an altar-piece by Cibber, made of Derbyshire spar and marble, with figures of Faith and Hope, and the wondrous wood carving of Gibbon, are among the treasures of this exquisite temple to the Most High.

Next we visit the Sculpture Gallery, in which are collected the choicest works of art in Chatsworth: the statues, busts, vases, and bronzes that we have passed in niches, upon cabinets, on great marble staircases, and at various other points in the mansion, would in themselves have formed a wondrous collection; but here is the Sculpture Gallery proper, a lofty hall over one hundred feet in length, lighted from the top, and the light is managed so as to display to the best advantage the treasures of art here collected. I can only mention a few of the most striking which I jotted down in my note-book, and which will indicate the value of the collection: Discobulus, by Kessels; upon the panels of the pedestal, on which this statue is placed, are inlaid slabs of elegant Swedish porphyry, and a fine mosaic taken from Herculaneum; a colossal marble bust of Bonaparte, by Canova; Gott's Venus; two colossal lions (after Canova), cut in Carrara marble, one by Rinaldi and the other by Benaglia--they are beautifully finished, and the weight of the group is eight tons; bust of Edward Everett, by Powers; the Venus Genetrix of Thorwaldsen; five elegantly finished small columns from Constantinople, surmounted by Corinthian capitals cut in Rome, and crowned with vases and balls, all of beautiful workmanship; a statue of Hebe, by Canova; a colossal group of Mars and Cupid, by Gibson; Cupid enclosing in his hands the butterfly; an image of Psyche, the Grecian emblem of the soul, an exquisite piece of sculpture, by Finelli; a bass-relief of three sleeping Cupids, also most life-like in execution; Tadolini's Ganymede and Eagle; Bartolini's Bacchante with Tamborine; a superb vase and pedestal, presented by the Emperor of Russia; Venus wounded by treading on a rose, and Cupid extracting the thorn; Endymion sleeping with his dog watching, by Canova; Achilles wounded; Venus Filatrice, as it is called, a beautiful spinning girl, one of the most beautiful works in the gallery--the pedestal on which this figure stands is a fragment from Trajan's Forum; Petrarch's Laura, by Canova, &c. From the few that I have mentioned, the wealth of this collection may be imagined. In the centre of the room stands the gigantic Mecklenburg Vase, twenty feet in circumference, sculptured out of a single block of granite, resting on a pedestal of the same material, and inside the vase a serpent coiled in form of a figure eight, wrought from black marble.

I have given but a mere glance at the inside of this elegant palace: in passing through the different grand apartments, the visitor, if he will step from time to time into the deep windows and look upon the scene without, will see how art has managed that the very landscape views shall have additional charm and beauty to the eye. One window commands a close-shaven green lawn over a hundred feet wide and five hundred long, as regular and clean as a sheet of green velvet, its extreme edge rich in a border of many-colored flowers; another shows a slope crossed with walks, and enlivened with vases and sparkling fountains; another, the natural landscape, with river and bridge, and the background of noble oak trees; a fourth shows a series of terraces rising one above the other for hundreds of feet, rich in flowering shrubs and plants, and descending the centre from the very summit, a great flight of stone steps, thirty feet in width, down which dashes a broad, thin sheet of water like a great web of silver in the sunshine, reflecting the marble statues at its margin, till it reaches the very verge of the broad gravel walk of the pleasure-grounds, as if to dash in torrents over it, when it disappears, as by magic, into the very earth, being conveyed away by a subterranean passage to the river.

After walking about the enclosed gardens immediately around the palace, which are laid out in Italian style, with vases, statues, and fountains, reminding one strikingly of views upon theatrical act-drops on an extended scale, we came to several acres of ground, which appeared to have been left in a natural state; huge crags, abrupt cliffs with dripping waterfall falling over the edge into a silent, black tarn at its base, curious caverns, huge boulders thrown together as by some convulsion, and odd plants growing among them.

In and about romantic views, our winding path carried us until we were stopped by a huge boulder of rock that had tumbled down, apparently from a neighboring crag, directly upon the pathway. We were about to turn back to make a _détour_, as clambering over the obstacle was out of the question, when our guide solved the difficulty by pressing against the intruding mass of rock, which, to our surprise, yielding, swung to one side, leaving passage for us to pass. It was artificially poised upon a pivot for this purpose. Then it was that we learned that the whole of this apparently natural scenery was in reality the work of art; the rocky crags, waterfall and tarn, romantic and tangled shrubbery, rustic nooks, odd caverns, and mossy cliffs, nay, even old uprooted tree, and the one that, with dead foliage, stripped limbs, that stood out in bold relief against the sky, were all artistically placed,--in fact the whole built and arranged for effect; and on knowing this, it seemed to be a series of natural models set for landscape painters to get bits of effect from.

Among the curiosities in this natural artificial region was a wonderful tree, a sort of stiff-looking willow, but which our conductor changed by touching a secret spring into a _veritable_ weeping willow, for fine streams of water started from every leaf, twig, and shoot of its copper branches--a most novel and curious style of fountain.

But we must pass on to the great conservatory, another surprise in this realm of wonders. Only think of a conservatory covering more than an acre of ground, with an arched roof of glass seventy feet high, and a great drive-way large enough for a carriage and four horses to be driven right through from one end to the other, a distance of two hundred and seventy-six feet, as Queen Victoria's was, on her visit to the estate.

Before the erection of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, this conservatory was the most magnificent building of the kind in England, and was designed and built by Paxton, the duke's gardener, afterwards the architect of the Crystal Palace. Here one might well fancy himself, from the surroundings, transferred by Fortunatus's wishing cap into the tropics. Great palm trees lifted their broad, leafy crowns fifty feet above our heads; slender bamboos rose like stacks of lances; immense cactuses, ten feet high, bristled like fragments of a warrior's armor; the air was fragrant with the smell of orange trees; big lemons plumped down on the rank turf from the dark, glossy foliage of the trees that bore them; opening ovoids displayed stringy mace holding aromatic nutmegs; wondrous vegetation, like crooked serpents, wound off on the damp soil; great pitcher-plants, huge broad leaves of curious colors, looking as if cut from different varieties of velvet, and other fantastic wonders of the tropics, greeted us at every turn. Here was the curious sago palm; there rose with its clusters of fruit the date palm; again, great clusters of rich bananas drooped pendent from their support; singular shrubs, curious grasses, wonderful leaves huge in size and singular in shape, and wondrous trees _as large as life_, rose on every side, so that one might readily imagine himself in an East Indian jungle or a Brazilian forest,--

"And every air was heavy with the sighs
Of orange groves,"--

or the strong, spicy perfume of strange trees and plants unknown in this cold climate.

Over seventy thousand square feet of glass are between the iron ribs of the great roof of this conservatory, and within its ample space the soil and temperature are carefully arranged to suit the nature and characters of the different plants it contains, while neither expense nor pains are spared to obtain and cultivate these vegetable curiosities in their native luxuriance and beauty.

I will not attempt a particular description of the other green-houses. There are thirty in all, and each devoted to different kinds of fruits or flowers--a study for the horticulturist or botanist. One was devoted entirely to medicinal plants, another to rare and curious flowering plants, gay in all the hues of the rainbow, and rich with perfume; a Victoria Regia house, just completed, of octagon form, and erected expressly for the growth of this curious product of South American waters; magnificent graperies, four or five in all, and seven hundred feet long, with the green, white, and purple clusters depending in every direction and in various stages of growth, from blossom to perfection; pineries containing whole regiments of the fruit, ranged in regular ranks, with their martial blades erect above their green and yellow coats of mail. Peach-houses, with the pink blossoms just bursting into beauty, were succeeded by the fruit, first like vegetable grape-shot, and further on in great, luscious, velvet-coated spheroids at maturity, as it drops from the branches into netting spread to catch it.

In the peach-houses is one tree, fifteen feet high, and its branches extending on the walls a distance of over fifty feet, producing, some years, over a thousand peaches. Then there are strawberry-houses, apricot, vegetable, and even a house for mushrooms, besides the extensive kitchen gardens, in which every variety of ordinary vegetable is grown; all of these nurseries, gardens, hot-houses, and conservatories are well cared for, and kept in excellent order.

The great conservatory is said to have cost one hundred thousand pounds; it is heated by steam and hot water, and there are over six miles of piping in the building. The duke's table, whether he be here or at London, is supplied daily with rare fruits and the other products of these _hot-beds of luxury_.

But the reader will tire of reading, as does the visitor of viewing, the endless evidences of the apparently boundless wealth that almost staggers the conception of the American tourist fresh from home, with _his_ ideas of what constitutes wealth and power in a republican country.

After having visited, as we have, one of the most magnificent modern palaces of one of the most princely of modern England's noblemen, it was a pleasant transition to ride over to one of the most perfect remnants of the habitations of her feudal nobility, Haddon Hall, situated in Derbyshire, a few miles from Chatsworth.

This fine old castellated building is one from which can be formed a correct idea of those old strongholds of the feudal lords of the middle ages; indeed, it is a remnant of one of those very strongholds, a crumbling picture of the past, rich in its fine old coloring of chivalry and romance, conjuring up many poetic fancies, and putting to flight others, by the practical realities that it presents in the shape of what would be now positive discomfort in our domestic life, but which, in those rude days, was magnificence.

Haddon Hall is in fact a very fine example of an old baronial hall in ye times of old, and portions of the interior appear as though it had been preserved in the exact condition it was left by its knightly occupants three hundred years ago.

The embattled turrets of Haddon, rising above the trees, as it stood on its rocky platform, overlooking the little River Wye and the surrounding country, seemed only to be wanting the knightly banner fluttering above them, and we almost expected to see the flash of a spear-head in the sunlight, or the glitter of a steel helmet from the ancient but well-preserved walls. We climbed up the steep ascent to the great arched entrance, surmounted with the arms, in rude sculpture, of the Vernon family, who held the property for three centuries and a half; and beneath that arch, where warlike helmets, haughty brows, and beauteous ladies, the noblest and bravest blood of England have passed, passed we.

No warder's horn summons the man-at-arms to the battlements above; no drawbridge falls, with ringing clang, over the castle moat, or pointed portcullis slowly raises its iron fangs to admit us; but for hundreds of years have hundreds of feet pressed that threshold of stone--the feet of those of our own time, and of those who slumbered in the dust hundreds of years ere we trod the earth; and we mark, as we pass through the little door, cut through one of the broad leaves of the great gates, that in the stony threshold is the deep impression of a human foot, worn by the innumerable steppings that have been made upon the same spot by mailed heels, ladies' slippers, pilgrims' sandals, troopers' boots, or the leather and steel-clad feet of our own time. Passed the portal, and we were in the grand, open court-yard, with its quaint ornaments of stone carving, its stone pavement, and entrances to various parts of the building.

There is a picture, entitled "Coming of Age in the Olden Time," which is familiar to many of my readers, and which is still common in many of our print-stores; an engraving issued by one of the Scotch Art Unions, I believe, which was brought forcibly to my mind, as I stood in this old court-yard of Haddon Hall, there were so many general features that were similar, and it required no great stretch of the imagination for me to place the young nobleman upon the very flight of steps he occupies in the picture, and to group the other figures in the parts of the space before me, which seemed the very one they had formerly occupied; but my dreams and imaginings were interrupted by a request to come and see what remained of the realities of the place.

First, there was the great kitchen, all of stone, its fireplace big enough to roast an ox; a huge rude table or dresser; the great trough, or sink, into which fresh water was conducted: and an adjoining room, with its huge chopping-block still remaining, was evidently the larder, and doubtless many a rich haunch of venison, or juicy baron of beef, has been trimmed into shape here. Another great vaulted room, down a flight of steps, was the beer cellar; and a good supply of stout ale was kept there, as is evinced by the low platform of stone-work all around, and the stone drain to carry off the drippings. Then there is the bake-house, with its moulding-stone and ovens, the store-rooms for corn, malt, &c., all indicating that the men of ye olden times liked good, generous living.

The Great Hall, as it is called, where the lord of the castle feasted with his guests, still remains, with its rough roof and rafters of oak, its minstrel gallery, ornamented with stags' antlers; and there, raised above the stone floor a foot or so, yet remains the dais, upon which rested the table at which sat the nobler guests; and here is the very table itself, three long, blackened oak planks, supported by rude X legs--the table that has borne the boars' heads, the barons of beef, gilded peacocks, haunches of venison, flagons of ale, and stoups of wine. Let us stand at its head, and look down the old baronial hall: it was once noisy with mirth and revelry, music and song: the fires from the huge fireplaces flashed on armor and weapons, faces and forms that have all long since crumbled into dust; and here is only left a cheerless, barn-like old room, thirty-five feet long and twenty-five wide, with time-blackened rafters, and a retainers' room, or servants' hall, looking into it.

Up a massive staircase of huge blocks of stone, and we are in another apartment, a room called the dining-room, used for that purpose by more modern occupants of the Hall; and here we find portraits of Henry VII. and his queen, and also of the king's jester, Will Somers. Over the fireplace are the royal arms, and beneath them, in Old English character, the motto,--

=Drede God, and honor the King.=

Up stairs, six semicircular steps of solid oak, and we are in the long gallery, or ball-room, one hundred and ten feet long and eighteen wide, with immense bay-windows, commanding beautiful views, the sides of the room wainscoted in oak, and decorated with carvings of the boar's head and peacock, the crests of the Vernon and Manners families; carvings of roses and thistles also adorn the walls of this apartment, which was said to have been built in Queen Elizabeth's time, and there is a curious story told of the oaken floor, which is, that the boards were all cut from _one_ tree that grew in the garden, and that the roots furnished the great semicircular steps that lead up to the room. The compartments of the bay-windows are adorned with armorial bearings of different owners of the place, and from them are obtained some of those ravishing landscape views for which England is so famous--silvery stream, spanned by rustic bridges, as it meandered off towards green meadows; the old park, with splendid group of oaks; the distant village, with its ancient church; and all those picturesque objects that contribute to make the picture perfect.

We now wend our way through other rooms, with the old Gobelin tapestry upon the walls, with the pictured story of Moses still distinct upon its wondrous folds, and into rooms comparatively modern, that have been restored, kept, and used within the past century. Here is one with furniture of green and damask, chairs and state bed, and hung with Gobelin tapestry, with Esop's fables wrought upon it. Here, again, the rude carving, massive oak-work, and ill-constructed joining, tell the olden time.

But we must not leave Haddon Hall without passing through the ante-room, as it is called, and out into the garden on Dorothy Vernon's Walk. On our way thither the guide lifts up occasionally the arras, or tapestry, and shows us those concealed doors and passages of which we have read so often in the books; and now that I think of it, it was here at Haddon Hall that many of the wild and romantic ideas were obtained by Mrs. Radcliff for that celebrated old-fashioned romance, "The Mysteries of Udolpho."

The "garden of Haddon," writes S. C. Hall, "has been, time out of mind, a treasure store of the English landscape painter, and one of the most favorite 'bits' being 'Dorothy Vernon's Walk,' and the door out of which tradition describes her as escaping to meet her lover, Sir John Manners, with whom she eloped." Haddon, by this marriage, became the property of the noble house of Rutland, who made it their residence till the commencement of the present century, when they removed to the more splendid castle of Belvoir; but to the Duke of Rutland the tourist and those who venerate antiquity, owe much for keeping this fine old place from "improvements," and so much of it in its original and ancient form.

That the landscape painters had made good and frequent use of the garden of Haddon I ascertained the moment I entered it. Dorothy's Walk, a fine terrace, shaded by limes and sycamores, leads to picturesque flights of marble steps, which I recognized as old friends that had figured in many a "flat" of theatrical scenery, upon many an act-drop, or been still more skilfully borrowed from, in effect, by the stage-carpenter and machinist in a set scene. Plucking a little bunch of wild-flowers from Dorothy's Walk, and a sprig of ivy from the steps down which she hurried in the darkness, while her friends were revelling in another part of the hall, we bade farewell to old Haddon, with its quaint halls, its court-yards, and its terraced garden, amid whose venerable trees

"the air
Seems hallowed by the breath of other times."